Breakup Icing and Cherry Shots
by Invisiblegirl3
Summary: A one-shot featuring Hermione Granger, post-breakup with Ron. ...He breaks her heart, she breaks a mirror. Disclaimer:Have you ever seen the cover of a Harry Potter book, or even the spine? If you haven't, then I ll tell you something: I didn t write those books, and I don't own them. That would be J.K. Rowling.


**A/n: Sorry if I mock your name. Don`t believe a word of it, you`ve got a great name.**

Breakup Icing and Cherry Shots

Over the past eight years, she`d been bullied, hunted, petrified for a while, and turned into a cat (sort of).

She`d once had to wipe her parents memories and make them completely forget about her for a year so they`d be safe.

She still had the scar on her arm from then she`d been tortured by a mad woman and had an incredibly offensive and demeaning term carved into her skin with a knife.

She`d fought a war and watched her friends die (although one came back to life).

Hermione Granger had shed tears and blood, and few girls her age were as acquainted with pain as she.

Yet, for some reason, when she saw her tears fall on the parchment, blurring the wounding and tactless word far from legibility, the pain was unbearably sharp, completely over riding the tolerance Hermione had thought she`d acquired.

She`d sooner be tortured by Bellatrix again if that could prevent Ronald Weasley from ever writing the letter. If she could do anything to make the quickly fading words untrue, anything in the entire universe, Hermione Granger would do it.

But she couldn`t.

The small owl on the window sill ruffled it`s feathers, obviously growing impatient.

"He can wait for eternity for all I care." She shouted at the bird.

Ron`s owl looked startled, as if saying 'Don`t shoot the messenger.'

"I`m sorry, I didn`t mean to take that out on you. It`s not your fault that he can`t see what`s right in front of him. He was never able to." Hermione paused, "And now he`s reduced me to talking to a bird as if actually knew or cared what I`m going on about. Bloody lovely." She walked over to her desk and dug around in one of the drawers. After a moment of hurried searching, she pulled out a long letter.

She scanned the page and mentally thanked herself for keeping all the old love letters Victor used to send her.

Hermione gave the jittery owl the letter and slammed the window shut behind it. Done.

Unfortunately, her eyes wandered over to the mirror next to her bookshelves. Her eyes and cheeks were red and watery, and the frizz levels of her hair were rising by the second.

"I`ve punched Draco Malfoy and defeated Umbridge. Natalya Henderson is nothing in comparison to me!" She shouted at the girl in the mirror. The girl raised her eyebrow, as if to say 'Then why are you crying?'

Hermione chucked a book Ron had given her at the mirror, distorting the girl. The girl looked as shattered as Hermione felt.

She collapsed on her bed, face down. Hermione was used to feeling lonely, as only children often are. But it`s worse when you`re miserable, broken, betrayed, and alone.

Hermione`s hand reflexively reached for her cell phone, typing by muscle memory, then letting the phone drop to the carpet.

"Hello?"

"…"

"Are you…Oh, hold on, Mimi, I`ll be right over."

The line went dead.

Three horrible minutes passed, and Hermione didn`t move once. There was a tapping at the window at one point, but after a while she was able to tune it out along with the sounds from the cars in the street below.

There was a loud banging from somewhere in her apartment. If someone was breaking in, Hermione didn`t care. Her heart was gone, so they might as well take everything else.

The door to her room burst open, and there was a crinkling slam of a shopping bag being dropped to the floor. There was a click when the intruder hung up Hermione`s cell, but again, it was ignored by the girl on the bed.

"Mimi… what happ- what did you do to your mirror?" The intruder (who wasn`t really an intruder at all, because she didn`t even have to break in, she used a key that got almost as much use as the one to her own flat. Since it wouldn't be accurate to refer to her as an intruder any longer, she`ll be referred to as Charlotte, because that is in fact her name.) said.

"Eh muzz moosic wager."

"I only speak English and German, so can we keep the conversation within those boundaries?"

Hermione lifted her face out of the pillow. "It was using logic."

"Ah-uh…Can you like, magic it back up?"

"Lottie, you`re such a muggle sometimes." Hermione said, collapsing her head back into the pillow.

"I am a muggle!" her cousin said, sitting down on the bed next to the lump that used to be Ron Weasley`s girlfriend.

Hermione turned her head. "Please. You`re practically a wizard, with all you`ve seen from me. Not every muggle has subscriptions to wizarding magazines and newspapers, you know."

"Have I said thank you enough?" Charlotte said, "Now, are you going to tell me what her name is?"

"Who ever said anything about a her?"

Charlotte snorted. "Look, I may be a muggle who can`t even do card tricks, but I`m not stupid. First of all, you only call me and just let it sit like that when you`re too sad to talk, which only happens in cases of extreme heartbreak or death. You must have gotten an owl with the news, because this is out of the blue. Death would have been in the papers, muggle or wizard, and I didn`t see anything, so that`s out. Heartbreak means friend or boyfriend, and the only one who`d be able to crush you in one move on such short notice like this is boyfriend. You and Ron haven`t been fighting or you`d have been more angry and would have yelled into the phone instead of just letting it fall. Your drawer with your old Krum letters is open a bit, and there is scattered papers lying around, which means you were in an angry rage and probably sent one of them as a reply, which enforces the Ron and heartbreak factors. You would only use a Krum letter to make him jealous, and he`s not the type to break up with you inexplicably… which means that there must be a her. He doesn't seem like the cheating type, but as Sherlock Holmes says, 'Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.'"

Hermione swore into her pillow. "How`d you get so smart?"

"Granger." Charlotte said, pointing at herself.

"A Granger who`s been watching too much Sherlock. Is that all you did while I was at Hogwarts and fighting against dark wizards?"

"That`s not all I did!"

Hermione turned and looked skeptically at her cousin.

"…I did reread the books and read some Agatha Christie novels."

There was a loud sigh from Hermione`s direction.

"You`re avoiding by question! What`s her name?"

"I`m taking the fifth."

"As in the fifth amendment, meaning the fifth amendment of the American constitution? That`s not valid or at all relevant. Neither of us are American and we`re in the UK. Name."

There was more undistinguishable muttering blocked out by Hermione`s pillow.

"Mimi…."

"Natalya Henderson." Hermione finally hissed.

"She`s got a hideous name."

"You would have said that no matter what."

"True." Charlotte riffled through the bag she`d brought, pulling out icing, whipped cream, pretzels, two shot glasses, and a large jar of maraschino cherries.

Hermione smiled, remembering their old tradition. She took the lid off the icing and broke the seal before dipping her finger in and swirling it around. The vanilla icing tasted like creamy hope.

"Remember Sam?" The younger cousin said as she put the shot glasses on Hermione`s nightstand.

Sam had been Charlotte`s first boyfriend, back when the girls were in primary school. For Charlotte and Sam, it had been as true and real as any primary school romance was. He gave didn`t tag her when he was it at recess and always pushed her on the swings, and in return she sat with him at lunch and gave him half of her cookie at snack time. Unfortunately, one day Sam got teased by his friends for picking flowers for Charlotte, and he broke up with her because he claimed her girliness was rubbing off. Later that day while they were over at their grandparent`s house, Hermione had found her crying out by the garden. She wanted to bring her something to cheer her up, but since she couldn`t reach above the second shelf in the fridge at the time, she grabbed a jar of cherries and some icing. Ever since, the girls had dubbed these their special comfort foods.

"What happened to him, anyway?" Hermione asked thoughtfully.

"Last I heard of him he was going off to uni so he could get a boring desk job and a boring life. That`s not important, though. What happened with Ron?"

"Lottie, you already guessed pretty much the whole thing."

"Yeah, but not the details." Charlotte popped open the bag of pretzels and swirled one in the icing.

Hermione sighed and closed her eyes. "The letter`s on my desk."

"I`d rather hear it from you, if you don`t mind."

"It`s nothing you wouldn`t have guessed. He met a girl in a pub in Hogsmeade a couple weeks ago when we were fighting, he was drunk and mad, and he kissed her. Apparently, he 'needs some time to think and work things out', and pretty much broke up with me."

"So you`re done. Just like that."

"Apparently." Hermione looked away to hide her tears.

"Splitsville."

"It wasn`t meant to be, Lottie."

"How can you say that?"

Charlotte stared at her cousin as she poured some of the cherries and cherry juice into the shot glasses. Hermione, startled, stared back.

"You two have known each other for ages, and even though you`ve had your ups and downs, fallings out and such, you`ve always pulled through in the end and still loved each other. You said he once ran away from you and Harry while you were on the lam from Voldemort, he managed to somehow find you guys again, despite all the spells and wards concealing you! It`s, like, meant to be!"

"You`re just being a hopeless romantic."

"Believing in true love isn`t being a hopeless romantic."

"Really? Name one instance of true love actually working out."

Charlotte beamed and was about to prove her cousin wrong, but Hermione quickly cut her off, anticipating what she was going to say.

"…In modern times without princesses."

"Remember that old Romance movie we watched last summer, You`ve Got Mail? The one about the bookstore owners?"

"You mean that bull…. _wonderful work of cinematography_ that is entirely too unrealistic for my tastes?"

"Come on, what was unrealistic?"

"What are the chances that the only time she ever goes into an online chat room, she meets and becomes pen pals (for lack of a better word) with the very man who`s corporation is running her store out of business?!"

"It`s a movie, Mimi."

"_Exactly_. A movie. Unreal, which makes your point invalid."

"Fine." Charlotte pulled a bottle out of her purse and poured some of the dark liquid into her cherry concoction.

"Really, Lottie? Where did you get that?"

Charlotte raised her eyebrows and took a sip. "Want some?"

Hermione sighed. "Why not."

"That`s the spirit."

Hermione swallowed her shot in one go.

"More?" her cousin asked, holding out the bottle.

Hermione took it and poured.

"So what are you gonna do?" Charlotte said as she went for more icing-covered pretzels.

"Nothing. It`s not my problem. It`s done. He doesn`t mean anything."

"Liar."

Hermione sighed. "Stop being so smart! Denial is an important stage of getting over things. Just let me carry on or I`ll smash you like the mirror."

"I`d like to see you try, Granger. Anyway, the stages of grief don`t really work correctly all the time when your forcing yourself through them."

Hermione`s glass was empty again, but not for long.

There was tapping at the window.

"Do you want me to get the letter or just return to sender?" Charlotte said kindly.

"Return to sender." Hermione popped a cherry into her mouth, trying not looking at the bird. She noticed a small black box at the bottom of the shopping bag.

"Can I put the DVD in?" Hermione called over her shoulder, not really needing a reply.

The disk was already in when Charlotte called back. "Go ahead. But Mi, I think you should read this. It`s from Harry."

"Not interested."

"He said…"

"Charlotte, I said I`m not interested in hearing from the sorry excuse for a friend who couldn`t even keep his best mate from cheating on his girlfriend."

"It`s not his fault."

Hermione blinked at the stupid tears, desperately trying not to let them leave her eyes. "Fine. Put it on my desk."

As the second preview started, Charlotte joined her cousin on the bed.

Hermione had another icing-coated pretzel.

"I love him, Char. I still do. It`s stupid, and… I know he made a big mistake… but I just can`t stop at the drop of a hat like this. He`s…I really thought he was…." Hermione explained quietly.

"I know." Her cousin acknowledge, whispering. "I thought so too. And Mimi? I still think he cares."

"Because you're a romantic."

"Because he wrote you a letter telling you the truth, and because his owl is outside the window with a letter that you are ignoring (-I`m not getting that by the way-), and yeah, because I`m a bit of a romantic, but I know deep down that Hermione Granger always wants the last word and tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, you`ll sit down and write him back telling him exactly why he`s a stupid prat and things will work out between you two, because they always do."

The girls sat in the almost silence, with only the noise of the movie and pretzel-eating (not to mention the street below) filling the void.

As the grandfather in the movie started to read, Charlotte whispered something so quietly that Hermione almost didn`t hear.

"It will be okay."

"I know." Hermione whispered back.

That was the one thing Hermione was certain of, after all the heartbreak, lost, pain, and grief of the war. No matter how much it hurt, how hopeless it felt, Hermione knew that the world would eventually get better, and maybe Charlotte was right, and Ron and Hermione would be friends again. But Hermione just wasn`t ready to talk to him quite yet.

"Natalya. That`s such a stripper name. Like Kandy." Hermione mumbled.

"She`s probably a blonde."

"Yeah, and not a natural blonde either."

"Who wears ponds of make-up."

"She`s probably got a posh accent."

"Which is also fake."

"She makes a living off of all of the rich boys she dates."

"Which, no offense to your ex, is probably why she only kissed him once. The Weasley`s aren`t well-off enough for her to be interested in Ron. She probably found out after they kissed, when he paid for their drinks in change."

"And that was the last he saw of that plastic witch."

"I would have added a slight B prefix to that last word."

"Shhhh. This is a good part." The girls watched as the characters wondered if the dark ship behind them was a fisherman.

"I bet she`s got six fingers on her right hand." Charlotte added.

**A/N: Points to anyone who knows what the movie they were watching was! If you say the correct movie title in a review, I`ll PM you a preview of the next chapter from one of my unfinished stories of your choosing, or a sneak peek of a new story I`m writing! **


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